Ideal Yukon summer has farmers predicting bumper crops

Yukon farmers are having what could be their best season ever.

Weather this summer has been ideal for farming, meaning crops are ahead of schedule and growers are predicting a bumper harvest.

"It's pretty much perfect growing conditions," saysJake Loos, a lead hand at the Yukon Grain farm near Whitehorse,as hestands waist deep in a barley field.

Loos says crops are all twoweeks ahead of schedule.

"I mean five days makes a big difference. Two weeks, well, never seen anything like it before."

Giant cabbages

Loos predicts kilogram-sized beets and cabbages the size of basketballs.

"That makes it easy, peel two beets and you got a meal for four," he says.

"People better get into the cabbage rolls this year because they are going to be huge."

Neighbour Ric Nielsen is growing potatoes for Yukon Grain Farmthis year. He's already harvested a hay crop.

"For as long as we've been here we've never put up our whole hay crop [in the]third week in June. Never happened before."

Loos says Whitehorse grocers will be selling Yukon Grain potatoes, carrots, beets and cabbages all winter.

"Probably be the best year that this farm's seen," he says.